The only accurate war movie ever made

Rating: 10/10 (12 March 2010)

As a veteran WWII historian, I always point to The Longest Day as the only war movie I've ever seen that is actually truthful and accurate.
Many war films are merely dramas or a backdrop for scriptwriter political views or to showcase a studio's stars. The Longest Day was NOT your typical Hollywood pseudo history. It contained actors from everywhere - every male actor in Hollywood wanted to be in this film, and a very large number of them were in this film. The film succeeds as history because it faithfully follows the book of the same name by Cornelius Ryan. Of course, a movie cannot come anywhere close to a book in terms of information, and thus there are necessary editing decisions as to what should be included. The biggest failure, in my opinion, is the lack of a clear exposition before the attack of exactly where the beaches were located and which units were assigned to them.
If one wants to know the full history of the landings, then the book is where to find it. Nevertheless, the movie does just about as good a job of providing the pertinent facts as is probably possible. Certainly this film makes a mockery of Private Ryan, a totally absurd piece of fiction with an absurd plot and populated by folks who never existed. That film also totally exaggerated the experience, with body parts flying all over the place. The casualty rate at Omaha Beach simply did not live up to its reputation as "Bloody Omaha." Only in comparison with the experiences of the other beaches would anyone claim a high casualty rate for Omaha. We landed over 35,000 troops on Omaha on D-Day, and the total number dead was less than 400. And A Bridge Too Far was a totally manufactured event that leaves the audience with more rather than less misinformation after viewing. It was a political movie, not a valid history of Market-Garden. The Longest Day is the real McCoy and also quite pleasant to watch. You don't need to manufacture facts to tell a good story. The story practically tells itself. And truth is always far more interesting than fiction.